Flirty, Hurty and Dirty

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz hired Clinton attorney Robert Bennett, who also defended Enron, to help defend him against the growing international keening for him to bounce on out of the World Bank after negotiating a sweet financial package for his lady friend.

Wolfowitz faces the bank board today, which also will consider allegations he used his position to help US allies and former friends in the Bush administration. President Bush is backing his appointee and wants Wolfowitz to stay.

Q: Does the president ever get tired of having to express his full confidence in the people around him these days?

MS. PERINO: When you’re president of the United States and you have this many folks that you are employing, it’s a pretty small number that he’s had to express full confidence in. All of us who serve at the pleasure of the president, if the moment he doesn’t have full confidence in you, you no longer work for him. And we all take that very seriously.

(afp)

“Big time wrong.”

Did anyone catch former CIA director George Tenet on ’60 Minutes’ last night? No? He said his “operational intuition” tells him al-Qaida has cells in the U.S. waiting to strike. He also denied the CIA used torture to get confessions from terror suspects, and called the outing of his former operative Valerie Plame “big time wrong.”

“We don’t torture people,” Tenet said.

“Waterboarding?” interviewer Scott Pelley asked, referring to a process whereby water is continually poured over a detainee’s face and mouth, simulating the effects of drowning.

“We do not — I don’t talk about techniques,” Tenet replied.

Tenet is under siege for his book, which also claims the Bush administration was feverishly working up the case against Saddam Hussein well before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and that Cheney operatives were swooning over bogus, would-be Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi “like schoolgirls with their first crush.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ yesterday to smile and grimace her way through a general rebuttal of Tenet’s book, which disparaged her as being aware of a possible attack before 9/11. This morning, Tony Snow went on Fox & Friends to issue a general snort at Tenet’s various claims.

“George Tenet and everybody else who studies this knows that there’s no such thing as a perfect war plan,” Snow said. “And what we continually do is take a look at the facts on the ground and try to adjust our strategy and our tactics so that we can come up with the most effective response to what’s going on on the ground. So as far as going back and playing “shoulda-woulda-coulda”, I’ll leave that to other folks.”

(afp)

Randall Tobias! Who?

We were ready to be all titillated and gloaty about ABC News scoring the list of former DC madam Deborah Palfrey’s alleged hooker clients. But like a lot of promising sagas involving government and salacious naughtiness, it just got sleazy and depressing really fast.

Randall Tobias, a Bush appointee who resigned Friday from the State Department, now claims he only used Palfrey’s escort service for relaxing massage. Palfrey, who similarly strains credulity with her claims that the service was strictly a no-sex operation, chided Tobias through the news media today for not coming forward sooner. Yeah, right.

Palfrey, who has been accused of running a prostitution service, said Tobias’ claim that he used the service only for massages is “valuable exculpatory evidence.” And Palfrey chided Tobias for not coming forward before Thursday, when ABC News questioned him about the service.

“Had he done so earlier, along with many, many others who have used my company’s services throughout the years,” Paflrey said after a Monday court appearance, “I most likely would not be in my current predicament.”

Tony Snow was asked about Bush’s reaction to Tobias’ departure. Snow said, “He’s saddened by it, but it was the appropriate thing to do.”